On 27 July 2026, members of the Zero Waste City team visited Virogreen, an electronic waste (e-waste) processing facility based in Singapore. Virogreen specialises in the handling of various types of e-waste, from CPUs to batteries.
At their Visitor Experience Centre, we were hosted by Vincent Quek, Virogreen’s Sustainability and Electronic Waste Consultant, who walked us through their process and let us try our hand at some of the steps ourselves, including dismantling e-waste and data destruction.
How does e-waste get recycled at Virogreen?
Virogreen receives e-waste from different sources including ALBA, the appointed Producer Responsibility Scheme Operator for e-waste. Vincent demonstrated how data-bearing devices (DBDs) are sanitised to ensure the highest standard of data security and prevent any recovery of personal or sensitive information. Devices are then sorted for material recovery based on the metals and materials that can be salvaged. These materials are then bundled before being sent overseas to Virogreen’s partners for further processing.
We also observed Virogreen’s onsite battery recycling process, which extracts “blackmass” from batteries, enabling the recovery of precious minerals such as cobalt, manganese, and nickel to be recovered for reuse, cutting down on the need for mining virgin materials.
Zero Waste City would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Virogreen for hosting us and giving us a closer look at their e-waste recycling operations. If you’d like to visit their Visitor Experience Centre to learn more, you can book a visit on their website.